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only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.
don’t worry about what language you use, God no doubt understands them all.
Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul. But isn’t the return of spring and how it springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks, but is that really a problem?
For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly.
So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience. Let God and the world know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.
as for purpose there is none, it is simply one of those gorgeous things that was made to do what it does perfectly and to last, as almost nothing does, almost forever.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
how wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints— all that glorious, temporary stuff.
you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
We are not wise, and not very often kind.
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
He imagines the river will last forever. He does not envy the dry house I live in. He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship. He wonders, morning after morning, that the river is so cold and fresh and alive, and still I don’t jump in.
(everything is nourishment somehow or another).
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
Last week I met the so-called deranged man who lives in the woods. He was walking with great care, so as not to step on any small, living thing.
“The house of money is falling! The house of money is falling! The weeds are rising! The weeds are rising!”
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
Imagine how the lily (who may also be a part of God) would sing to you if it could sing,
how are you so certain anyway that it doesn’t sing?
If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics. He’s the forest, He’s the desert. He’s the ice caps, that are dying. He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts. He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell. He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons. He’s every one of us, potentially. The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet. And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?
Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and each of you too, or at least of h...
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There was someone I loved who grew old and ill. One by one I watched the fires go out. There was nothing I could do except to remember that we receive then we give back.
On grief
So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
Sometimes melancholy leaves me breathless.
God, rest in my heart and fortify me, take away my hunger for answers,
You sing, I listen. Both are necessary
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many.
you have given him, for your own reasons, everything that he needs: leaves, food, shelter; a conscience that never blinks.
Lord God, mercy is in your hands, pour me a little. And tenderness too. My need is great.
But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding, than this deepest affinity between your eyes and the world.
A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
every year the hatchlings wake in the swaying branches in the silver baskets, and love the world. Is it necessary to say any more?
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.
how to be idle and blessed,
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn’t mind being a rose in a field full of roses. Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.
The butterfly’s loping flight carries it through the country of the leaves delicately, and well enough to get it where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping here and there to fuzzle the damp throats of flowers and the black mud; up and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes for long delicious moments it is perfectly lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk of some ordinary flower.
I know several lives worth living.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
till the principle of things takes root, How shall examples move us from our calm?
